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"A Sceane of Uttmost Vanity": the Spectacle of Gambling in Late Stuart Culture

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"A sceane of uttmost vanity": The Spectacle of Gambling in Late Stuart Culture James E. Evans Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, Volume 31, 2002, pp. 1-20 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/sec.2010.0001 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sec/summary/v031/31.evans.html Access Provided by University of North Carolina at Greensboro at 02/28/13 2:44PM GMT "A sceane of uttmost vanity" The Spectacle of Gambling in Late Stuart Culture JAMES E. EVANS estoration diarist John Evelyn describes a memorable occasion at R court on Twelfth Night, 6 January 1662: This evening (according to costóme) his Majestie opned the Réveils of that night, by throwing the Dice himselfe, in the Privy Chamber, where was a table set on purpose, & lost his 100 pounds: the yeare before he won 150 pounds: The Ladys also plaied very deepe: I came away when the Duke of Ormond had won about 1000 pounds & left them still at passage, Cards &c: at other Tables, both there and at the Groome-porters, observing the wiccked folly vanity & monstrous excesse of Passion amongst some loosers, & sorry I am that such a wretched Custome as play to that excesse should be countenanc'd in a Court, which ought to be an example of Virtue to the rest of the kingdome.1 According to The History of Gambling in England, "Play at Court was lawful, and encouraged" between Christmas and Epiphany: "When the King felt disposed, and it was his pleasure to play, it was the etiquette and custom to announce to the company, that 'His Majesty was out'; on which intimation all Court ceremony and restraint were set aside, and the sport commenced." Restored along with the Stuart monarchy, this custom was not limited to 2/EVANS holidays. A few years after the Restoration the French ambassador wrote about the court of Charles II: "There is a ball and a comedy every other day; the rest of the days are spent at play."3 High stakes gambling, which became one of the ubiquitous recreations of late seventeenth-century England at palaces, the groom-porter's, and private houses, epitomized the Carolean carnival that followed the Cromwellian lent. "At no time probably in the history of England," asserts Cyril Hughes Hartmann, "has the passion for gambling reached a greater height or spread over a larger section of society" than during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.4 Nowhere did the rage for gambling remain more evident than at court, where the King's mistresses and numerous others wagered enormous sums. In January 1685, near the end of Charles's reign, Evelyn once again depicts the gamblers: "I saw this evening such a sceane of profuse gaming, and luxurious dallying & prophaneness, the King in the middst of his 3 concubines, as I had never before." Among those present, Evelyn adds, he was "witnesse" of the King, sitting & toying with his Concubines ... whilst about 20 of the greate Courtiers & other dissolute persons were at Basset round a large table, a bank of at least 2000 in Gold before them, upon which two Gent: that were with me made reflexions with astonishment, it being a sceane of uttmost vanity; and surely as they thought would never have an End: six days after was all in the dust.5 The rhetoric of Evelyn's diary frames these occasions in such language as "observing the wiccked folly," "a sceane of profuse gaming," and "a sceane of uttmost vanity." However, between the two passages, separated by more than twenty years, there is an important shift in perspective. On the first evening, the persons observed retain their power; depicted in active verbs, the King opens the gambling, the ladies play, the Duke wins. During the second visit the spectator assumes greater authority over those observed. He sees the King "in the middst" and the courtiers "at Basset." Given additional force, at the time of writing, by his knowledge of the reign's imminent end, Evelyn emphasizes the observers' "astonishment" and moral outrage rather than lamenting the negative influence of the court. Using Evelyn's texts as a starting point, this essay examines a similar shift in the discourse of gambling—from a social spectacle representing the uneasy privilege of the aristocracy during the Restoration to a spectacle recreated in comic plays and periodicals after the Revolution of 1688. Early in this period, for example, Charles Cotton's The Compleat Gamester (1674), "A Sceane of Uttmost Vanity": The Spectacle of Gambling / 3 a manual describing "all manner of usual and most Gentile Games either on CARDS or DICE," includes an apology for "the lawfulness of recreation" and promises "delight to such who will pass away their spare minutes in harmless recreation if not abus'd."6 Looking backward in Memoirs of the Lives, Intrigues, and Comical Adventures of the Most Famous Gamesters and Celebrated Sharpers in the Reigns of Charles II, James II, William III and Queen Anne (1714), Theophilus Lucas laments that "diversion and entertainment" are "the great excuse which gentleman have for losing their money: Every-body pleads privilege for recreation." To him, gambling is "an enchanting witchcraft, begotten by those devils, avarice and idleness."7 The differences between Cotton's book, with its accounts of twenty "Principal Games at Cards," six "Games within the Tables," and seven "Games without the Tables," and Lucas's "Secret History" of twenty-six gamblers illustrate the change in the cultural signification of gambling. According to Lawrence Stone, high stakes gambling in the seventeenth century was one form of "conspicuous expenditure," which was "deeply ingrained in this idle and exhibitionist society." In a century during which "insecurity caused a struggle for status," gambling served "a social function as a symbolic justification for the maintenance or acquisition of status."8 Georges Bataille theorizes similarly about the function of "unproductive expenditure" in archaic societies: "More or less narrowly, social rank is linked to the possession of a fortune, but only on the condition that the fortune be partially sacrificed in unproductive social expenditures such as festivals, spectacles, and games." Usefully for this study, Bataille connects "a positive property of loss" to "nobility, honor, and rank in a hierarchy" and hypothesizes that wealth is "entirely directed toward loss in the sense that power is characterized as power to lose. It is only through loss that glory and honor are linked to wealth."9 Paradoxically, then, upper class willingness to venture enormous sums, even perhaps to risk ruin, was necessary to manifest status to others and thus to maintain privilege in Restoration England. This process may have been exacerbated by circumstance. After the Restoration, writes Christopher Hill, as "the distinction between landed and moneyed interests" became "more apparent than real," the added insecurity generated another problem for gentlemen and ladies: "The aristocrats who regained their privileged position after 1660 had no significant role to play in the reconstructed social order. Flocking to the court, they ceased even to take their traditional part in local government; and at court their role was decorative rather than functional."10 In response to "an increasingly defensive awareness that social hierarchy was under assault," argues Michael McKeon, 4 / EVANS aristocratie conduct illustrates "the more elaborate sort of 'theatricalization' that is likely to occur whenever social convention is raised to the level of self-conscious practice."11 This self-consciousness can be found, for example, in Obadiah Walker's Of Education (1673), which asserts that a gentleman "by his Family" is "already placed upon the Theater, where all his actions shall be observed . even more then they deserve; all mens eyes are upon him."12 Gambling, in all its Restoration excess, contributed to the social spectacle at court and elsewhere, as some men and women risked their fortunes to demonstrate their status. Not surprisingly, then, gambling was also integral to the reopened theater, especially to comedies of the 1660s and 1670s, including such major plays as Sir George Etherege's The Man of Mode ( 1676) and William Wycherley's The Country Wife (1675). Etherege, for instance, evokes "deep play" as a practice congruent with his protagonist's social identity. To the modish Dorimant, "deep" signifies high stakes, which are not, by definition, irrational or immoral. Emilia. There are afflictions in Love, Mr. Dorimant. Dorimant. You Women make 'em, who are commonly as unreasonable in that as you are at Play; without the Advantage be on your side, a man can never quietly give over when he's weary! Medley. If you would play without being obliged to complaisance, Dorimant, you should play in publick places. Dorimant. Ordinaries were a very good thing for that, but Gentlemen do not of late frequent 'em. The deep play is now in private Houses.13 As this passage establishes Dorimant as a skilled libertine and gambler, it expresses the values of a gentleman who prefers his pleasures apart from those who gamble for gain. According to Thomas M. Kavanagh, "The true courtier never plays only to win money. If he gambles, it is to demonstrate a prowess superior to that of his adversary." Consequently, the courtier's gambling, which shows his "superiority to the ever more imperious rule of money," centers "on affirming one's basic ethics and identity ... that of the individual as one who knew, lived by, and incarnated a socialized perfection conceivable only within the context of the court."14 In England, Stone observes, gambling was "a suitable pastime for a gentleman, one of whose functions was to live in idleness with elegance and grace.
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